Size and Growth Rate

In their 1992 monograph, The Population of North
Korea, Eberstadt and Banister use the data given to the UNFPA
and also make their own assessments. They place the total
population at 21.4 million persons in mid-1990, consisting of
10.6 million males and 10.8 million females. This figure is close
to an estimate of 21.9 million persons for mid-1988 cited in the
1990 edition of the Demographic Yearbook published by the
UN. Korean Review, a book by Pan Hwan Ju published by the
P'yongyang Foreign Languages Press in 1987, gives a figure of
19.1 million persons for 1986.

The figures disclosed by the government reveal an unusually
low proportion of males to females: in 1980 and 1987, the maleto -female ratios were 86.2 to 100, and 84.2 to 100, respectively.
Low male-to-female ratios are usually the result of a war, but
these figures were lower than the sex ratio of 88.3 males per 100
females recorded for 1953, the last year of the Korean War. The
male-to-female ratio would be expected to rise to a normal level
with the passage of years, as happened between 1953 and 1970,
when the figure was 95.1 males per 100 females. After 1970,
however, the ratio declined. Eberstadt and Banister suggest that
before 1970 male and female population figures included the whole
population, yielding ratios in the ninetieth percentile, but that
after that time the male military population was excluded from
population figures. Based on the figures provided by the Central
Statistics Bureau, Eberstadt and Banister estimate that the
actual size of the "hidden" male North Korean military had
reached 1.2 million by 1986 and that the actual male-to-female
ratio was 97.1 males to 100 females in 1990. If their estimates
are correct, 6.1 percent of North Korea's total population was in
the military, numerically the world's fifth largest military
force, in the late 1980s
(see The Armed Forces
, ch. 5).

The annual population growth rate in 1960 was 2.7 percent,
rising to a high of 3.6 percent in 1970, but falling to 1.9
percent in 1975. This fall reflected a dramatic decline in the
fertility rate: the average number of children born to women
decreased from 6.5 in 1966 to 2.5 in 1988. Assuming the data are
reliable, reasons for falling growth rates and fertility rates
probably include late marriage, urbanization, limited housing
space, and the expectation that women would participate equally
in terms of work hours in the labor force. The experience of
other socialist countries suggests that widespread labor force
participation by women often goes hand-in-hand with more
traditional role expectations; in other words, they are still
responsible for housework and childrearing. The high percentage
of males aged seventeen to twenty-six may also have contributed
to the low fertility rate. According to Eberstadt and Banister's
data, the annual population growth rate in 1991 was 1.9 percent.

The North Korean government seems to perceive its population
as too small in relation to that of South Korea. In its public
pronouncements, P'yongyang has called for accelerated population
growth and encouraged large families. According to one KoreanAmerican scholar who visited North Korea in the early 1980s, the
country has no birth control policies; parents are encouraged to
have as many as six children. The state provides t'agaso
(nurseries) in order to lessen the burden of childrearing for
parents and offers a seventy-seven-day paid leave after
childbirth
(see Family Life;
The Role of Women
, this ch.).
Eberstadt and Banister suggest, however, that authorities at the
local level make contraceptive information readily available to
parents and that intrauterine devices are the most commonly
adopted birth control method. An interview with a former North
Korean resident in the early 1990s revealed that such devices are
distributed free at clinics.

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